I don't want them like I want you
by et.in.arkadia
Summary: These days it seems like practically everyone has had a go at Bruce. Practically everyone.


These days it seems like practically everyone has had a go at Bruce. Practically everyone.

Tony isn't an idiot by any stretch of the imagination, and also he has the most high-tech surveillance system on Earth and other planets besides. He can zoom in and count the strands of dark hair on Bruce's head if he wants to, analyze their follicle growth and propensity to gray.

Instead he stares at all the evidence with mounting pique. Pique is the word for it, he thinks.

"Jarvis. Show last week again."

"Certainly, sir."

The view onscreen is crystal clear, well lit. Bruce, a little rumpled but wearing that shy sideways smile, Tony knows the one, is bidding shadowy figures goodbye in an entranceway. Then a body leans forward, and it's Natasha in nothing but a sort of sheer lace wrap that doesn't even try to cover her spectacular curves, and Natasha's hugging Bruce.

A beat and the other shadow shifts, and Clint, wearing nothing whatsoever spectacularly, moves forward and hugs Bruce, too. All of them hug.

It would be fucking touching, really, Tony thinks, if it weren't abundantly clear that Bruce's six hours inside Natasha's had been exactly that.

Not like it's his place to mind or judge or whatever. Clint and Natasha, cool. They were cool, they were good together, maybe they liked to mix it up sometimes and, of course, Bruce is an obvious choice. Smart choice on their part. Tony would have made the same call.

Bruce doesn't take up too much space but is still hot as fuck in that naughty professor way, doesn't have the super-sized egos the rest of them trended to, goes to lengths to project calm and cool even when he isn't feeling it.

Is all open minded with the hippie-dippie and touchy-feely shit from years fighting his inner demon. Is exceptionally brilliant on top of the karmic stuff, can sequence the DNA of people and stars like others made music. Excels at yoga and is probably all-around bendy and -

A damn cuddly guy, that Banner. Easy to take to bed and hug in the morning and have him go away with a soft smile and still stay the best of friends, apparently.

Apparently, since fucking everyone has had a fucking go at Bruce except for Tony. Tony hasn't even gotten a hug that wasn't like a Go-Team-Hoorah-We-Did-It hug.

The hugging thing is weird. Bugs him. Even Thor has done it. Tony doesn't ask for a replay of that surveillance. It's burned into his braincells.

Bruce, looking more than rumpled: pale, drained, starry-eyed. Salt-and-pepper hair all shocky and standing on end. Looks like he's not quite sure what happened to him or what the fuck had fucked him but also looks like it had been good, had been very, very, very good.

And then fucking _Thor_ reaches down and hugs Bruce, cradles him warmly to the gargantuan span of his chest. Tony couldn't quite make out what they were whispering but fucking _Thor_ laughs like he's gotten a fucking joke or something, and then he sets Bruce back down and takes his flawlessly naked demi-god ass back inside.

On the recording of it Bruce readjusts his glasses and blinks for a second and there's the curve of that easy sideways grin at no one at all, except perhaps Tony's cameras, but Tony keeps re-imagining the bit where Thor is naked and treating Bruce like his favorite teddy bear of sex and doesn't think about that.

It's not like he really _minds_ who Bruce sleeps with, or who sleeps with Bruce, or whatever, but there's such a thing as fair play and Tony isn't getting any. This he minds.

How come he gets to spend the most time with Bruce, more time than anyone else does, passing hours of sheer genius in the lab, then hours spent laughing and talking and drinking and theorizing and drinking and playing with gadgets and drinking, and he alone gets no fucking or hugging or _anything_ except a new bestest bro? What he gets is Bruce leaving days spent attached at Tony's hip to be tumbled by someone else at night.

Tony Stark has a fined-tuned bullshit detector that requires no wires or batteries whatsoever and this has gotten to be bullshit in its highest and most supreme form, a unique form of bullshit rarely seen outside of legend.

He drinks the equivalent to the GPD of a small island nation and says, with _Casablanca_ flair, "Play it again, Jarvis."

Jarvis knows the one. The most recent recording had made been thirty minutes ago. Tony wasn't even spying intentionally, was just minding his own goddamn business in his own goddamn futuristic surveillance deck when they came on-screen. It wasn't like they didn't know he was watching. Or someone was. Something was always watching at Stark Tower.

"Sir-"

"Jarvis. I don't remember building you to argue with me."

"Far be it for me to ever do so, sir. I only thought it prudent to remind you that upon your first viewing of the footage, you destroyed an extremely rare prototype touchpad that -"

"I have twenty of those," Tony snaps at the smug-sounding British air. "Fucking play what I tell you or I'll reboot you with a country-western twang."

"As you say." Now even Jarvis wouldn't give him a hug if he could, sounds pissy. Throws the replay up on the biggest screen there is and dims the lights like it's a movie.

This he doesn't know quite how to watch again. The other things had been different than this.

This is Steve and Bruce smashed up against a wall. This is Steve all over Bruce, licking at his neck, devouring his mouth. His knee is pressed hard between Bruce's legs, and Steve's hands have caught Bruce's wrists and are pinning them down at his sides.

Bruce is immobile, but also isn't, returning the fierce kiss in kind, then letting his head fall back while Steve sucks hungry bruises just below the line of visibility on his collar. Bruce closes his eyes and doesn't look at where the cameras are.

Eventually Steve does, and he spins them from the wall toward the waiting doorway, where Tony can zoom just enough to see Steve yanking Bruce's shirt from where it had been neatly tucked before the panel slides closed.

"Jarvis," Tony says, groping after a bottle to drink. "Call a fire drill, won't you?"

"Sir, no fires have been reported. The Tower systems are in perfect-"

"That's why it's a goddamned _drill_," says Tony. "We need to liven this place up. Keep people on their toes. Remind them we're still a nation at war."

"It is three fifty-eight ante meridiem. Do you believe it the most _prudent_ time to evacuate the facil-"

"Shut up. Just shut up. I have to think." Tony's hooked a bottle of something pungent and drinks some of it. "No, I don't want to think. Jarvis, death metal catalogue volume seven. Maximum sound."

"Sir, volume seven-"

"I'll reprogram you to sound London cockney, only I'll base the accent off of Dick Van Dyke in _Mary Poppins_, so help me God," says Tony.

Jarvis turns on the music.

Furious noise melts Tony's eardrums until they're screaming as loudly as his brain is. It helps him think, normally, helps offset the whir of mechanical parts in his chest, but it isn't working right, and Tony's chest feels hollower than usual.

The only thing that helps is still being somehow awake forty-five minutes later when the door opens at Steve's and Bruce steps out into the light.

"Ha," Tony tells someone, maybe Jarvis, maybe his friend the second half-empty bottle. "An _hour_. All those push-ups haven't done G.I. Joe any favors, looks like. An _hour_." He jabs furiously at buttons and knobs and so gets a full zoom of Steve's blissed-out face emerging behind Bruce.

Steve's hand slides over and around his shoulder, and then he's folding Bruce into a close-bodied hug made closer by the fact that Steve has a minute towel knotted around his waist and nothing else. His body is all ripply with perfect muscles and deep-tanned and cut close enough to a Greek god's to give Thor pause.

Bruce hugs him back and aw, isn't that fucking cute, everyone who wants one gets a hug. Steve swivels to land a quick kiss in there, and another tight squeeze, and Tony thinks the best idea he's had all night is to equip his fleet of cameras with taser capacity.

Tony knows he shouldn't feel like this - whatever this is - so scorned, so deprived, so confused. Knows it's not fair to blame any of his friends in the building or Bruce, and he doesn't, not really, in his spare moments of rationality.

It's only that it started quietly and kind of okay with Clint and Natasha and now it's everyone, absolutely everyone but him. Nick's due to visit soon and it'll probably be a matter of minutes before he and Bruce are hugging it out.

And it's worse because it's all in Tony's head really, Bruce isn't keeping this a secret, knows Stark Tower is watching. Bruce is just doing his thing, only his thing apparently involves every eligible super-ego in the galaxy save the one he hangs out with on a regular basis.

Tony doesn't get it, so he says that, finally. Always says the things he thinks too much even after all of Pepper's lessons and warnings.

He's in his office staring bleary-eyed across the darkening city from a set of chairs by the panoramic windows. Bruce has been invited and admitted to the space on his invitation - Tony knows he commandeered the night because Steve's in town three more days, but he doesn't care, doesn't care to watch that again anytime ever unless he's personally filming it.

Bruce has come bearing a nice bottle of barrel-aged whiskey, and he settles in as gently and unobtrusively as ever, pours himself a glass and asks Tony if he wants the same, or if he's in more of a bourbon sort of mood.

"I don't get it," says Tony.

He's still facing the glassed-off city. Quiet up here from the chaos of the streets. He doesn't have eyes in the back of his head without the suit on but he can still see Bruce's answering quirk of a smile, half-puzzled, half-amused. That's what his voice sounds like.

"What, whiskey and bourbon? I'm sure you built a still when you were ten. I did. You don't need me to describe the difference. I could break down their chemical differentials for you on an atomic level, though, if you like. It's actually quite fascinating how alike they-"

Tony turns around. "Jesus fuck, Banner," he says. It's the hottest thing anyone's ever said while pouring liquid into a glass.

If this were anyone else, any other freaking creature in the universe, he would just seize and take and claim it, like he'd always done with things he wanted. But Bruce is different, utterly unseizable for too many reasons. All he can do now is keep his seat when Bruce approaches and passes over whiskey.

He eases into the chair next to Tony and crosses his feet at the ankles. He's just on the right side of scruffy, unkempt hair combed down with fingers, the slightest shadow of a beard darkening his cheek. It's gray and black and Tony imagines it feels like silk and sandpaper. Bruce sits and rolls his head a little, like he's shaking off a long week, overused muscles. Tony bets.

Tony can't stop staring, and Bruce has eyes, too, so he says, at last, like he's slowly catching on that this isn't quite like their other drinking nights, of which there have been many, "What don't you get?" His eyes are guileless behind glasses as he looks closer. "You okay, man? You look like you haven't gotten a decent night's rest in a while."

Tony swallows entirely too much alcohol and decides to blame that for choosing the petulant path. He'd wanted to be a grown-up about this, had speeches and shit planned out and everything.

But he's used to snark and backbiting and not being taken to task for his tongue so he says too sharply, "I _know_ you haven't, yet here you are looking fresh as a daisy. What's your secret? The viewing audience wants to know."

Bruce had been leaning forward, but now he tilts back, hits the padded embrace of his chair. He looks at Tony for a long moment, then takes a longer drink and looks at the winking city lights and racing cars on the streets below.

He says, not hiding a spike of surprise, "Is this what we're talking about? If I had known the topic for discussion and your apparent disapproval, I would have come adorned with a scarlet A."

That takes a second for Tony to parse because he's super fucking smart but better with the electronics than the literary references, but when his brain catches up to Bruce's he says, "Don't be an asshole. I don't - I don't _care_ if you want to have a gangbang with Thor and Loki both-"

Okay, sometimes he should learn to stop talking, sometimes his talking is very very bad and doesn't help at all and things that make sense in his head don't gel with the real world but Tony's started so even with Bruce staring at him kind of wide-eyed and slack-jawed now he keeps talking.

"That's not right, I didn't mean _that_. I mean I'm not judging, I don't judge, I'm, like, the last person on Earth who could be properly elected to judge anyone's bedroom decisions. The things I've seen and done, let me tell you-"

And it's all going wrong, all of it, he really should never speak again out loud, and now Bruce is staring at him with confusion and maybe dismay, and Tony cannot fucking stand the way Bruce's forehead scrunches up when he looks like that, so-

"Why not me?" It's out of him and an actual sentence hanging between them in the air before he can wrestle it back down. Since it's loose there's no keeping back the rest of it. All the frustration and the perceived slight and the ache of it. "Why everyone and not me?"

Bruce closes his mouth with a click of teeth, too hard. Tony tries not to see that Bruce's grip is white-knuckled on his glass. He isn't making him angry, is he? Bruce changing colors is bad. Tony's been an ass, yeah, and rude, and presumptive, and kind of crazy-sounding, but he never wanted his anger to be transmitted.

Luckily Bruce's voice sounds calm when he finally decides on a reply, and his eyes, though still rather round, are close enough to serene. "The others," he starts, slowly, and Tony nods him on, needs to hear it no matter what it is, needs to know where he's gone wrong. "They..."

"Fucking _what_?" When Bruce hesitates, Tony nearly propels himself from the chair.

"...asked me," Bruce finishes.

They watch each other back and forth a bit, and then Tony repeats this like an extraordinarily wealthy parrot. "They asked you."

"Yes." At least the hint of the smile he likes is showing on Bruce's face.

"Ah. Gotcha." They sit with it. Since flinging himself through the window isn't much of an option suitless, Tony attempts to regain some ground and sense of self. He has a long draw of his drink. "I haven't asked you."

"Not that I recall, no."

It's moved through several territories into the most surreal conversation he's ever had, but Tony likes this much better than the earlier dialogues. This is more the way they usually were only now talking about more important combustible things now than quantum mechanics.

Tony says, "And if I were to ask? Theoretically, of course," and Bruce's expression is nearly as brilliant as he is.

He cants his head, speculative. "Theoretically speaking," Bruce says, "We would be in bed - or on the couch - in 1 minute seven seconds. Give or take." He considers. "Factoring in time to untie shoes. Unless we elected to leave shoes on, which has some probability."

Completely filthy talk. It is so dirty Tony is barely comprehending its syllables, is mostly watching how the elegantly-drawn bow of Bruce's lips shapes happy words that involve him.

But then Bruce is saying other things, things that sound worse because there's a worried tiny crease crossing his brow. Bruce is saying, "But theoretical is right. I'm not certain that we should."

Tony tries not to sound indignant but it's one of his favorite pitches. "You just said-"

Bruce looks like he wants to look away but doesn't. Had to give the guy credit for not flinching much.

"The others," Bruce says, and Tony can see them all in his mind's eye, all happily fucking and hugging. "I don't want them like I want you."

It's a perfectly glorious sort of sentence. Tony's favorite maybe ever. Better than Shakespeare. He wants it in writing.

"How's that?" he asks, grin askew. This has gone from total crap to totally awesome in zero to one-eighty, record speed.

"A lot," says Bruce. "The unit of measurement hasn't been discovered yet."

Tony kisses him. It's the only thing for it. Bruce's lips are parted halfway anyway, he just has to slide forward to complete the circuit, and Bruce is there with him immediately, and it's even better than it has any right to be.

It's so...he's so present, so aware of the surprisingly gentle way his fingers feel the scruff of Bruce's stubble as they frame his face, and then all Tony can feel is the soft heat of the only mouth he's cared to look at in a while. Tony doesn't usually start off kissing like this, like there's a violin wailing somewhere in the background, but he goes with it.

Pulls back only because Bruce has his hands on Tony's biceps and is pushing with enough pressure to mean it. Pulls back with Bruce's ample lower lip caught between his teeth, loathe to relinquish it now that he's found it.

"Tony," Bruce says when he has his lip again and frankly Tony's name has never sounded quite so sexy but do go on, "I—_we_-"

"Precisely," says Tony. "Exactly that."

"We can't," says Bruce, which is the wrong answer, so Tony shakes his head. It's better when Bruce tightens his long fingers around Tony's muscles. Bruce is saying, "With you I don't have the same control. My heartbeat _defines_ erratic, my breathing changes-"

"That's a side effect I have," Tony says. "Or so I'm told."

"Be serious a minute-"

"I'm _being_-"

Bruce nudges at him with his nose to Tony's cheekbone, so he shuts up and just feels what that feels like, which is quite fucking nice.

Bruce says, hesitant, hesitating, "It's pretty basic biology. Overly - overly excited emotion can trigger the Hulk, and then I won't be able to control...him." He tries to lessen the let-down with a touch of upturned mouth, tries to show that it's the compliment it is. Unsaid but spoken is _and you know just how to trigger me_.

"Aw," says Tony, drawing out the sound. "Your concern is sweet, touching, really, Dr. Banner, but just a trifle short-sighted, don't you think?"

Bruce blinks. Of potential replies, not what he'd been anticipating. "Pardon?"

"You're excused this once for vision problems. You know I love the glasses. Anyway. Speculate with me, Bruce. Present yourself again with the problem you've named, that your body, naked, that your naked body, when properly _excited_ by one such as I, runs the risk of turning scary bad monster at just the _worst__ moment." He makes related, explanatory gestures. "Now back up, and add the variable that you are a dashing engineering megagenius with literally inexhaustible resources." Tony ducks close to kiss him, triumphant, catches Bruce's lips shaping a silent, surprised 'o'. _

"You..." Bruce says it into his mouth, and Bruce's lit-up eyes look delightfully curious. "You planned ahead."

"Ah, now you've deduced it, Doctor," says Tony with Sherlockian relish, kissing again - hard to stop that, once begun. He only leans away and rocks back on his heels once Bruce is gasping, hopes to hell they're close enough to a camera speaker because Tony wants to replay the sound of Bruce gasping again and again and again. "C'mon. I'll show you."

Tony tries to move them but when Bruce stands still he is very difficult to move indeed, improbably heavy. Bruce is examining him closely, and then he slides the fingers of one warm hand along the tracings of Tony's beard.

"What've you got?" Bruce asks, looking a little dazed at the revelation. And flattered. Definitely more flattered and intrigued than creeped out by Tony's preparedness, which is a Good Thing. "A heart monitor? Something like that?"

Tony doesn't try to suppress his snort or his hands from settling and setting up shop on the slim jut of Bruce's hipbones. "Again with the underestimation. How you wound me." Bruce's hipbones fit the fold of his palms just so. Just exactly so. "Mere heart monitors are for amateurs and I am no amateur, sir. No." He lets his eyebrows do their waggly thing and leans forward to recapture Bruce's lower lip.

With his mouth thus full, Tony is particularly pleased with himself. He's got this one on lockdown.

"Built us a bedroom," he explains, punctuating with his tongue.

It is a wonderful, ingenious sort of bedroom. Pure unadulterated genius, if he doesn't say so himself, though he does pretty often. He'd actually started sketching the designs before Bruce's run as the love guru of Stark Tower but that had advanced its construction. Easy enough to add a couple of work-teams to a side project on a distant wing. They'd gone unnoticed in the buzzing crush of reconstruction on the building.

The clear impenetrable walls, modeled on the cage they'd made for Bruce and put Loki in, weren't exactly sexy or reminded of happy fun times, so Tony had them hidden behind a tasteful mix of old wood and modern chrome. There are screens enough in here to keep him happy but also floor-to-ceiling bookshelves packed with enough rare volumes to keep Bruce happy too. Tony always tells him that paper is so yesterday but Bruce is an unerring bookslut.

All of the elegant overstuffed leather furniture is of a single piece and firmly bolted down. Save the books, there is nothing in the room that is not firmly bolted down. Every work of art and accessory is worked into the walls and floors. No shelves of nick-knacks or ancient Ming vases in here. Nothing to fling, nothing that could be flung. Upon the first sound of alarm, a wall of glass is primed to slide over the library. It is as Hulk-proof a space as exists on planet Earth.

Bruce can't quite absorb all the details and time spent in planning but Tony tells him some of the features as they're walking there. He talks at the excited clip with which he describes his best most awesome projects only this time he keeps interrupting the speech and shoving Bruce up against the wall.

In the space of traveling twenty levels he walls Bruce at least a dozen times. The elevator is risky; he isn't sure they are going to make it out alive or with clothes.

Now in the bedroom Tony built for him Bruce is standing, hands in his pockets, trying to take in all in. His quick eyes behind their lenses don't miss much. The best part is how his hair is a mess from having Tony's fingers running through it again and again and one shirttail of his dark blue shirt is untucked. Just one. The most restraint Tony Stark has shown in a lifetime of very little restraint.

Bruce looks from looking around to Tony's face. "This is...it's unbelievable."

"In a good way, though, right? Unbelievably freakin' sweet, you mean. I haven't shown you the best part yet." Tony slings an arm around Bruce's waist and drags him to the closest display. Here he's in his element; the touchscreen feels like an extension of his hand, and he can show Bruce that there's so much more to the room than met the eye: Tony's genius, that is, irrepressible when it set to problem-solving.

The screen flicks into sharp display. There they appear as two heat-mapped bodies, side by side, and a panel shows a dizzying array of numbers and graphs and whirring iconography. They're being tracked practically to the nanometer by thousands of tiny sensors built-in and embedded absolutely everywhere. Neither takes a breath or lets go a heartbeat without the room knowing it.

"Holy shit," says Bruce, sounding suitably impressed into swearing and also leaning closer to examine the technology, which is one of the reactions to things that prompts Tony to need to fuck him six ways from Sunday.

He lets Bruce bend to the screen, but swings around to stand with their bodies pressed tight as he does it, his chin hooked over Bruce's shoulder. The need to test his tech and fuck immediately wars with the need to preen and be praised for his obvious brilliance and foresight.

"Marvelous," murmurs Bruce, eyes scanning over the stats. Tony preens. "It's excellent work. You thought of everything."

"Mmm," Tony agrees. "Yeah. I kinda did. Also made up some new stuff. It's what I do."

He leaves Bruce scrolling at the panel, comes back as Bruce is turning to see where he'd gone. Tony seizes Bruce's left wrist in both hands and slips a slim bracelet of silicon and metal and rubber around it to fit snugly.

Bruce watches him do it, lets him do it, and immediately as it's fixed another colored panel pops up on-screen with a sound like a dulled tiger's roar.

Bruce lifts a silver-dark eyebrow. Tony grins and shrugs and says, "Couldn't help it." He lets go of Bruce's wrist but doesn't stop touching. He starts tackling the buttons that line Bruce's dress shirt. Unnecessary, pesky old things, buttons. Clothes should answer to command. It's why he prefers t-shirts when he isn't suited up.

"Last few times we were in a fight, I was able to track the Hulk's heart-rate and vital signs from the suit, and I used the data to put together a little program," Tony explains. He's nearly done with the buttons and now Bruce is watching himself be undressed, though sometimes his gaze flickers to catch Tony's while he talks.

"That baby-" he indicates the thin rubberized cuff - "tracks you, and the Hulk, all blended together, shows how close you are to approaching his level." He yanks at the open shirt, and Bruce twists to help, and then he's finally shirtless for Tony in a non-fighting capacity, slim and strong under the low lights of the classy décor he picked for them. "It warns us early and often if you're getting close to the edge."

Bruce is worrying his lower lip attractively. "All of this for me?"

Tony clamps down on saying _well it's mostly for me really_ which will kill the mood since Bruce's eyes are as big as moons and his half-bared body proves better than Tony's caught glimpses, is dangerously edible. Made to scrape tongue and teeth across.

Tony licks his lips and says, "Least I could do."

Bruce says, automatically, softly, "You don't owe me anything, you know," but they both know that isn't true, so Tony doesn't answer.

Instead he says, "It's not entirely altruistic. If it works - and it'll work, because I made it - the tech'll help us in the future when your other side pokes through. Also now I can ask you properly."

Bruce has reached over to catch the seam of Tony's t-shirt while he speaks, is urging it slowly up. "What's that?"

He's such a mixed pitch of innocence and perversity it's everything Tony can do not to throw them down where they stand. Can't do that when there are such better surfaces.

"To bed," says Tony. "To go to bed with me. Pretty please?"

He taps a command on the control screen and one of the walls recedes, showing that the room expands into a larger space, with a big wide bed set and bolted down, steel-framed against the the wood. Here there are windows of unbreakable glass that look out over the brimming city, but screens shade them now, and they are alone.

The beatific grin Bruce flashes in response is added to the pantheon of Tony's favorites, and then Tony lets Bruce tug his t-shirt up and away. Bruce looks exceedingly pleased that Tony remembered to ask, and to have gotten one of his prized Rage Against the Machine tour shirts in hand.

"Points for Grade-A preparedness and for chivalry," Bruce says smilingly, then steps in and seals his mouth right over the pulse point on Tony's throat. On the display, it's Tony's heartbeat that climbs first.

Outstripping Bruce's earlier conjecture, they are naked in bed, shoes off, in one minute two seconds. He has Bruce naked in bed beneath him with kiss-stung lips and wild hair, all lithe lovely limbs and glorious, gloriously hard cock.

Totally ready and willing and able to be fucked and do fucking and then also all the things Tony would do with that perfect 'o' Bruce could make with his mouth. The glasses are finally off.

But Bruce is Bruce so has to do other things like putting exploratory hands on Tony's chest, like sitting up under him to press his ear and cheek against the metal there that's always whirring hot and cold. Tony usually wears a shirt in this type of scenario but the Bruce Banner scenario has never before played out in reality. Bruce had been purposeful about it, removing his protective layer, making him glow in the half-dark.

Some eyes would look at the arc reactor embedded in his flesh and the ugly mottled veins that border it with disgust, but Bruce's hold only boundless fascination. He examines Tony like he would a particularly beloved and stubborn problem-set.

When he drops back down on the bed, Bruce says, "It hurts, doesn't it." Not a question.

"Yeah," Tony admits, and if they're going to be all deep about shit he's at least going to use his vantage point and close a hand around Bruce's cock, still so reassuringly rock-hard even though he'd been analyzing Tony's robotic chest cavity. "But only sometimes like an angry rage monster, so I can't complain."

"You don't, you know." Bruce groans low and scrumptious after speakings and Tony can tell - _knew_ that he'd be vocal in bed once they got past all the placid zen stuff. He flicks his thumb in concerted circles around the head of Bruce's cock to elicit that sound again, which is shortly followed by, "You complain about a lot - the rate of productivity in your departments, the state of global political affairs, the stock market, the Yankees, the weather, pizza, but you never complain about this."

"I hear they're going to nominate me for sainthood soon," Tony says, with expert tugs and twists of his wrist. Bruce's heartrate is up and racing but a big screen in clear sight of the bed is showing their vital stats and Bruce's Hulk-potential stats, and the needle on the latter hasn't budged.

"Maybe the Hulk knows you need to get properly laid," Tony considers, thinking aloud now in between sucking complex blood-bruises following the line of Bruce's collarbone. His hickeys are gorgeously rendered and totally overtake and overshadow the messy marks Steve had left there the night before. "Hulk likes me, you know."

He's teasing and teasing Bruce's cock too close to the edge already - this all-over body monitoring tech is pretty great for bed, monstering-out notwithstanding. Tony should have built it years ago.

The gorgeous scrolling screen of stats is practically a guide to how turned on they are, which is _a lot._ Measurable, now, boldly numeric.

He expects Bruce to laugh, which he does, sounding almost helpless with laughter and breathless about Tony's hand. "I think you may be right. It's kind of funny when you think about it."

"We're focusing on the present," Tony reminds. Tony has waited a long time for this, much longer than he waited for most things. Been patient when he wasn't being pissed-off about it. Invented auspicious leaps in modern technology and constructed an immensely complex suite in which to make it happen. So against his initial instincts, using his better ones, he takes his time.

_I don't want them like I want you,_ Bruce had said, when he'd formed Tony's favorite sentence to date. Beneath him Bruce is beyond responsive, electric like a livewire, both pliant and ravenous. Waits and takes and reshapes and returns every touch they share.

How he was with the others Tony is done trying to imagine, but he doesn't think it was like this.

Tony takes his time. Inspects and investigates the way that Bruce is wired, every wiry point at which he's fused together. He sets about proving his own conjectured theory that Bruce's body is made for sex. Incredibly strong, unbreakable, even, in a frame half the size of Thor's and twice as flexible. He's finely muscled - all that yoga, Tony thinks - and gracefully composed. The exceptionally proud cock is a bonus but not entirely unexpected. Tony had peeked.

In bed Bruce is open, unhesitating, unleashed, free of the doubt that kept him from crowds, freed to think only about his body and its pleasures instead of its pains. No wonder Bruce went willingly to his friends' doors when they asked.

This is more than friendly, though. This is more than friends.

They are very good at being friends but friends aren't quite this way in bed together. Tony is being slow and sort of reverent, is moving slow and sort of reverently on Bruce beneath him, and they keep getting distracted by prolonged spells of kissing and too much touching. The last few months have been dominated by a lot of significant stares and not a lot of touching at all and they are making up for it in double time.

Tony delights in blowing Bruce to within an inch of his life for the sake of science. Bruce writhes to the beat of his expert ministrations, and Tony can feel how his pulse leaps under his tongue and see it elevate on-screen, but Bruce's Hulk monitor hasn't stirred.

Once they know Bruce can handle quite a range without detrimental side-effects Tony resettles over him. Starts to work wet fingers into Bruce while his face watches Bruce's face watching him do it.

He's so fucking tight, so achingly tight, it's tricky to even know how to start, and Tony's an old hand at this. He looks from his hand to Bruce's strained and straining expression, to the bob of Bruce's Adam's apple when he swallows once, twice, then does some sort of yoga move and lets out a breath and relaxes all over. Air hisses out through Bruce's teeth, and Tony's fingers go a little deeper.

Tony says, "How?"

He saw it, he watched it himself too many times, he saw all the footage of Bruce being taken inside by varied Avengers. Bruce can't seem to make his features settle between a gasp and a smirk. "I told you. It was different with them. I didn't-"

"They didn't fuck you," Tony says, pondering the unexpected exquisite depths of the idea as his fingers crook to make Bruce's sound decidedly a gasp. He thinks about it some more. "_You_ did _them_?" He's impressed. It's impressive.

His brain catches a moment. "Even Thor?"

Bruce lies quietly, letting that pass, lets his hips shift up from the bed with Tony's rhythm. Lies modestly, like he doesn't kiss and tell. Then, deliciously, he doesn't sound modest at all. "Would you shut up and fuck me already, Stark?" he says.

It's not an unreasonable demand, and after voicing it Bruce follows up with, "My god, I've been wanting to say that since the day we met."

Tony likes this development, makes Bruce all the more ready with trickily smart fingers. "Say that again."

Bruce could say _which part_ but he knows so what he says is, "We should have been fucking since the day we met."

Tony groans in the process of slicking up his own cock, especially when Bruce's hand joins him at it. "Amen," he manages. It's the simple truth. They'd been eye-screwing on a daily basis since the moment of introduction but that had never produced quite the desired result until now.

Usually this is more of a mechanical process for Tony but he feels every minute movement they make, every brush of living skin on skin. Positions himself to take Bruce at just the right angle, making all of their math work. Doesn't expect the first push in with Bruce's eyes on him to undo him like it does. He's done this a million times. Close enough to that. Something like that.

Somehow this is different. Different because it's Bruce, and Bruce is tight as holy hell but Bruce _wants_ him there, wants him in, lifts up and presses back against Tony even though it's slow going. Inch by teeth-clenched inch. Different because Bruce is watching him the whole time, and fuck, Tony's watching Bruce, and their eyes keep holding entirely separate meaningful side conversations.

Halfway in and sweating with the effort to keep himself bridled but the soft sounds of encouragement out of Bruce are enough to hold him steady. Tony tangles a hand in Bruce's unkempt curls for balance, lets the weight of his body settle heavier.

Wonderful perfect moment of glory where Bruce's leg comes up to hook around his ass, drawing Tony deep and deeper, and when he can thrust he thrusts. Careful and insistent at once, seizing this now that he finally has it, guiding his cock that is too hard for words into hot tight heat that grips and wants and welcomes him.

He loses Bruce's gaze a moment when Bruce's lids close and he puts his head back into the pillow, exposing the elegant line of his throat. Tony starts leaving distinct impressions of his teeth there, and once Bruce has opened his eyes and rejoined him, Tony says, "Fuck. You feel..."

Bruce smiles, the crinkly best kind that reaches his eyes. "You feel better. Don't stop."

"Oh, I'm not even warmed up," Tony assures. And he may he an overconfident dick but he has also more than earned the right to some overconfident dickery. There are many things he excelled at in life - an abundance, really, truly an embarrassment of riches and actual riches - but Tony Stark has excelled at sex since the first time he'd tried it and has pursued that course in life along with his other significant accomplishments.

So many beds, so many partners, but never before a bed like this, one that he'd designed and made for one partner. Beside them on the screen, Bruce's blood pressure is ticking up and his pulse is high like he's running a marathon, but there's no sign of imminent Hulking, not even the slightest shade of green.

Tony's buried to the hilt exactly where he wants to be and it worked, his beautiful technology is working, and he has carte blanche to fuck Dr. Bruce Banner and now that he's doing it he's not sure how he's ever supposed to stop again.

But stopping's for later. Tony had promised he was barely even started. He starts to show Bruce what he knows. They've already shared a considerable breadth of intellectual knowledge but this is another body of work entirely. This is about bodies, what Tony knows about them, how he knows better than anyone how they tick and how to manipulate their internal wiring.

Locked together on the bed he fucks Bruce with every trick in the book and some more he's writing as they go along. Does him long and slow and deep like something from a romance novel, his tongue sliding over the edges of Bruce's teeth while his cock slides in and out and in.

Rolls them over and over again on the bed to reset them and when he resettles into the cradle of Bruce's thighs he grips there hard, digging fingers in with relentless pressure.

Bruce's body can't be broken, and Bruce is tossing his head, and when Tony starts teasing with short quick hard hard thrusts Bruce is perfect in every way because Bruce says, "Fuck, _yes_, more-" and that's all Tony needs to start slamming his way home. Takes hold of Bruce's hipbone with one hand and cups the other under his ass and pulls him close as bodies could be pulled at the same time he's pressing relentlessly in.

This time it's Tony who shuts his eyes sometimes as they screw with abandon, the stats on the screen ramping up but not into danger-zones, though this is dangerous, this is very very dangerous.

Somehow Bruce is taking everything Tony has, giving it back in kind, their bodies running with sweat from frenetic motion. Bruce is a sex-master on his own which Tony had known but here they are, fucking fully-matched, like he thought maybe they could but had never thought it could be like this.

Mouthing away from Bruce's ear, across his cheek, rediscovering lips, the kiss is oddly gently considering Tony's thrusts are fast and fierce enough to threaten the construction of the bed if it weren't made of steel and he hadn't designed it. Tony kisses him, and fucks them together to the point of breaking everything but the bed.

"I was waiting for this," Bruce murmurs, when Tony's buried too deep for technicalities, when it's unclear where they begin and end, better fused than even Tony's tech. Bruce's nails trail sparks down the length of his back. Echoes his thoughts. "Knew we'd be like this if we got the chance to try. Felt like I was waiting forever."

"Built us a _bedroom,_" points out Tony, panting, pointed.

"Indeed. You did." Underneath him Bruce's dark eyes have gone bright. "Okay, you've won this round. But next time I'll-"

_I've won everything__, Tony thinks, pulling out almost all the way, then watching how he can make Bruce's pupils grow by sliding all he way back in without pause. All he can hear as he moves is __next time_. 

Bruce stops talking but says his name when he does that, so Tony does it some more, driving them on, deep and relentless. Bruce is meeting every thrust with an upward push of his hips, and his hands are in Tony's hair, and Tony has unlocked him.

Found the secret rhythm to decrypting Bruce Banner, hitting at just the right spot to make Bruce gasp and open somehow ever more, taking Tony deeper. Bruce is making the best kind of encouraging, inarticulate noises, but when Tony doesn't let up and just keeps going Bruce is unlocked, decrypted, decoded, shields down.

"Fuck, yes. God, _Tony_. So good. It's so fucking good. _You_ feel so. Fucking. Good. Yes, there. There. Just like that. Fuck me just like that. Yes. Oh god, so good. You're so good. I knew of course you'd be good but I didnt - Oh. Oh. _Oh._ I can't-"

"You can," Tony says. "You're going to come so hard for me, Bruce. I'm going to make you. And I'm going to watch."

Bruce's fingers are gripping too tight in his hair so Tony grabs a wrist in each hand and pins them to the mattress. Elegant wrists with deceptively delicate bones. He leans in to kiss him on the next propulsion, and that's when Tony sees that Bruce has closed his eyes and bitten nearly through his lip. All of his lower lip is white from white teeth.

That's when a big panel pops up on-screen with a sound like a dulled tiger's roar.

For a third of a second, Tony indulges in a complete and total full-on-freak-out, and thinks the reactor in his chest might have exploded were it connected to his brain.

In the full rest of the second, Tony turns his head to parse and scan the technology he made, and processes the results. Underneath him Bruce is shaking, whether from the brink of orgasm he'd been on or the brink of grappling with the green unknown until Tony looks.

"Three percent," says Tony, loosing Bruce's wrists and smoothing fingers through his hair. Bruce's hair is made darker with sweat that hides the streaks of silver. "It's only three percent, Bruce. Bruce."

Bruce cracks open an eye. It is black with arousal but no other color. Tony says, "The first safeties don't even come into play until we reach twenty-five percent, and you're holding steady at three."

Bruce seems to breathe again, and though Tony didn't mind the sensation at all of Bruce clamping down and tightening when he tensed, it's better when he feels Bruce start to cautiously relax against him.

"Maybe that was just his way of saying hello," Tony says nonchalantly, nipping small kisses along Bruce's jawline, down his neck. "Like, hey, I'm here, and I totally approve of this dude fucking you far more so than all of those others I couldn't even be assed up to bother about at all."

Bruce's laugh is low and slow, and Tony's slow, sliding confidently back into him. He lets their bodies realign and re-find their rhythm, smoother and more decadent than the rough energy that had aroused Hulkish tendencies.

Tony knows they'll have to be exceptionally careful, but three percent is three percent, a tease. A challenge. Three percent! He fits his hand to the base of Bruce's cock and starts to pull him along as he rocks in and out and in and out and his hand goes up and down and Bruce scrunches his eyes just so and -

"Three percent!" Tony's not good at not saying what's on his mind even in entirely inappropriate moments like this with his fingers tightening decisively so he says, "Next time, I'll get you to five-"

And Bruce moans when he says it, coming hard and hot between them, slicking their overheated skin. His hair is like a mad scientist's, standing up from the friction of the pillow, and he wraps all of himself around Tony as he rides the wave of it.

"Tony," he's murmuring, "Tony," so it's really fucking hard to keep it together himself but Tony has waited long enough for this to wait a little longer so that he can watch Bruce's face change in the best of ways and be the cause of it.

Then Tony can't stop can't stop anymore can't keep it off even though he'd deny it all night if it meant staying longer as part of Bruce. Bruce is breathing a little more evenly and his thighs tuck up close in encouragement. He touches Tony: fingertips ghosting the shell of his ear, along the edges of his beard, down between the dip of his collarbone. Then Bruce's palm is settling feather-light against the metal coexisting with Tony's chest.

Bruce's eyes meet Tony's, and they're more electric than the arc reactor is, and for the first time since it was put into his body Tony forgets to feel it and only feels the way he comes in Bruce. He comes too hard, too deep, so deep, crushing his lips to Bruce's so he could telegraph more directly what this is doing to him. He writes epic stories about explosions against Bruce's mouth. There's another story about a secret name and the name is Bruce's so he says it like an invocation.

"Fuck me," says Tony, once his body's calmed down a little and his mind has stopped simultaneously screaming and salsa-dancing. He doesn't want to, but eventually has to shift free from Bruce, moves to lie alongside him to keep as much skin-to-skin ratio going as possible.

"Next time. The five-per-cent time," Bruce says, with that almost-shy sideways smile that had really started all of this in the first place. Tony licks Bruce's lips to see what it tastes like.

Tony squints at the time on the screen. "So, by my calculations we have about one point three hours, give or take, until next time. Let's grab a quick bite to eat because we're neither of us as young as we once were even if we _are_ enviably spry."

Bruce looks amused. "How do you figure?" He scrubs a hand through his hair, which is completely unruly, pornographically so, and then he hooks his glasses back on, so Tony revises.

"Okay, sixty minutes flat until we're fucking again. I'm using a complex formula that takes into account my hunger level, biological processes and the floating probability of whether I'll be able to make it through the meal without tearing your clothes back off." Tony makes a dismissive gesture. "Tricky stuff. I'll map it out for you in the lap tomorrow. After I fuck you in your desk chair. Do you have any idea how long I've wanted to fuck you in your desk chair?"

"We could eat in the lab," suggests Bruce softly, with soft, suggestive eyebrows.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a goddamned genius?" Tony is already groping after clothes, throwing some at Bruce, tugging on others.

Bruce only readjusts his glasses, polite, as though to say _quite some people have._ He slips into his shirt and pants, which prompts Tony to begin a plan to put even more secret passages and covert elevators into place at the Tower. They should damn well be able to move from bedroom to kitchen to lab naked if they damn well pleased. It was poor planning on his part and he'd see it corrected.

They go in easy tandem toward the door. Bruce is rolling up his sleeves, and Tony pauses mid-monologue, both of them catching on the slim silver-and-rubber sensor looping Bruce's wrist at the same time.

Tony lays a hand on Bruce's unaccessorized wrist. "I can take it back for now. The program will run anywhere in the building I bring a receiver to, and if we go above five percent we'll go back to the bedroom. You only need to wear it when we - do stuff." Bruce has to live with the perpetual reminder of the Hulk inwardly, always; he hardly needed outward signifiers. "Note that the tech can be fully optimized for mobility in the event of vacations."

This time the smile is in Bruce's eyes. "I think I'll keep it on, for now," he says, and he tangles his fingers in Tony's, reassuring press of pressure, then slips them free. "Really, it's the nicest friendship bracelet I've ever gotten."

"I wove it for days and days," says Tony, droll and beaming, tugging Bruce through the door.

Yards away and almost at the elevator when Tony skids to a stop. Bruce, close and just behind, bumps up against him with a questioning look and a startled sound.

"I nearly forgot," says Tony. "How could I nearly forget?"

They're in full sight of many, many cameras and are well lit as Tony steps in close to Bruce and gets his hug.


End file.
